How much power do you really need?? Honestly?

chgolatin2 · « **on:** 24 Mar 2007, 06:41 pm »

Kinda curious of a statement that was made to me by a salesman from a local hifi store about an amp. To make my story short I went to visit the local hifi store and I told him the issues that I had going with my setup. Base on what I told him he informed me that I was lacking the power that my VSA VR2's speakers needed in order for them to perform at their peaks that I needed MORE POWER well, how much power I asked?

He started talking "chinese" to me about high end gear and the science behind it, he offered me a Musical Fidelity KW750 and a KW Pre amp he told me that I shouldnt have any problems with the MF gear to run my current setup, however I asked him if I really needed 750 watts at 8 ohms and 1100 watts on 4 ohms? Scratch my Head, He said yes and I told him that I was confused Scratch Head again since I didnt believe that your really need massive amount of power to drive your speakers to listten to good music, anyway to make the long story short I left the store confused. I have a Jolida 1000RC 100WPC and a JD 100 cd player with VR2's speakers. My speakers are rated at 87bd with 200 watts and 500 watts peak. He also stated that Tubes gear was not going to give me what I needed and that I should go with a hybrid system. Personally, I love tubes.

Honestly speaking do you really need that much power to drive your equipment? I was under the impression that 100 up to 300 watts should be sufficient enough for anyones listening needs, especically you like to crank it up from time to time like I do??? Hmmm, maybe I have the wrong setup Rolling Eyes after almost 10k on my system investment I'm having my doubts....

Thanks to all in advance!

JimJ · « **Reply #1 on:** 24 Mar 2007, 06:53 pm »

8 watts works fine for me

Sounds like he was just trying to make a sale, not give you correct advice. Can't say I'm surprised

robert1325 · « **Reply #2 on:** 24 Mar 2007, 07:45 pm »

my dad drives his B&W 801 s2 :

With 25 wpc audion 300B tube monoblocks.... No problems at all and he preffered the combo over his old NAD and Sumo amps ( 200wpc)

I'm currently using 5 wpc of very nice tripath power to drive my hawthornes!

doorman · « **Reply #3 on:** 24 Mar 2007, 07:56 pm »

Sounds like yet another example of "know-nothing" sales people, selling purely on the basis of specs/price, with fidelity, and relevant questions almost non factors

Don

WEEZ · « **Reply #4 on:** 24 Mar 2007, 07:58 pm »

The Jolida has plenty of power for the VR2 speakers. Plenty.

WEEZ

robert1325 · « **Reply #5 on:** 24 Mar 2007, 08:16 pm »

room is a living room with kitchen , I think the living room part is about 8x5 meters... Volume varies, depending on the mood and kind of music
( sometimes very loud)

Sorry about that

Whitese · « **Reply #6 on:** 24 Mar 2007, 08:24 pm »

I drove Quad ESL 63's with a single triode Berning EA-230 (30 watts), I even pushed some JBL L96 and EV12trxb and Bozak CG's with a less than one watt Berning Microzotl....not the loudest, but the sound and bass was phenomenal.

WEEZ · « **Reply #7 on:** 24 Mar 2007, 08:33 pm »

tvad4,

Yeah, I went back and read it. Hmmm. All I can say is, that if the Jolida is truly a 100 watt amp (maybe that rating is generous?) and the speakers are as easy a load as they appear to be, that should be a match made in heaven.

Hey Chgolatin2..Save your hearing and turn it down

(something is bad wrong somewhere...)

WEEZ

chgolatin2 · « **Reply #8 on:** 24 Mar 2007, 10:09 pm »

tvad, thanks for all of your help! You seem very knowledgeable about speakers and their components, at times I do play pass the half setting on my Jolida and many times I play using just below the 50 percent volume setting. It all depends on my mood for the day, lol! I will take my time with my setup, explore other options and maybe just maybe change somethings around and see. This is a fun hobby however its kinda hard to get where you want to without doing any mistakes sometimes expensive, sometimes not...

chgolatin2 · « **Reply #9 on:** 25 Mar 2007, 01:06 am »

My room is 20 ft wide by 30 ft long with 8 ft ceiling, pretty large area.

Russell Dawkins · « **Reply #10 on:** 25 Mar 2007, 01:18 am »

Good question,

Without being facetious, I think you need about ten times the power generally considered appropriate.

Scotty · « **Reply #11 on:** 25 Mar 2007, 02:07 am »

I have to agree with Russell on this one. The room is 4800 cubic feet in volume.
It is two to three times the size of what many manufacturers consider average
for a listening room. Russell might be able to come up with some equations which relate to the room size,speaker efficiency and desired peak SPL at one meter.
It looks like you could easily exceed the power handling capability of your speakers before you reached the desired SPL. The distortion levels from the speakers are also going to rise. It is a good bet that you are clipping your amp
frequently and this is at least one source for the harshness you are hearing.
I have a room a little over half the size of yours and speakers that are 95db efficient. I use a 60watt/ch. into 8ohms and 120w into 4ohms amp and can hit 110db peaks at the listening
position with no clipping and no distortion. If I had a room your size, 400 rms watts per channel into 8ohms might not be enough.
Scotty

mixsit · « **Reply #12 on:** 25 Mar 2007, 02:25 am »

You can get fairly close (I hope a I got this part right?

) Double the watts for each 3db increase?
For these 87db@1watt speakers (801's and the Vr's), with a 25 watt you'd be soft clipping at around 100db. 108 db peaks at 128 watts. That doesn't sound like a very gererous amount of head room. (still all at 1 meter no less).
Wayne Smith

JoshK · « **Reply #13 on:** 25 Mar 2007, 04:08 am »

tvad gave you some very good and well thought out advice. this salesman is exactly the type of salesman that give hi-fi brick and mortar stores a bad name; complete horseshit advice imo. you should have seen how loud we were able to rock today with 90db speakers with a 15watt amp in a reasonable sized room with some treatments.

there are some things a high powered amp, i.e. greater than 150w or so, can bring to the table, but this is a fraction of a the time you listen. if you like a lot of large scale orchestral with super wide dynamic range, think mahler, tchaikovsky, wagner, then more than a modicum of power, say 50 watts, is sometimes needed for the short bursts of high demand. if you like rock/pop/jazz, chances are you can get away with a lot less.

if you like tubes, don't get talked out of them by this chump as you will regret it in the long term. keep a reasonable powered amp and a tube preamp, hybrid, your current if you like it, or biamp with a ss amp on the woofers and then the tube amps can tolerate the remainder with aplomb.

konut · « **Reply #14 on:** 25 Mar 2007, 05:31 am »

Heres my take. 8 ohms nominal, 20 ohms max, 7 ohms min. Can you find a plot of this impedance curve? If its like most curves for 2 way speakers, there are perhaps only 1 or 2 points in the frequency spectrum where the speaker will actually draw 100 watts. Throughout most of the spectrum your speakers are presenting a higher impedance load to the amp. Most amps put out less power into higher impedance loads. This is probably a case where the all important synergy is missing.

Russell Dawkins · « **Reply #15 on:** 25 Mar 2007, 06:12 am »

What's to stop you going back to the store where they recommended the MF KW 750, borrowing it for a day and finding out for sure if that's the answer?

If you like the result you could then start looking for that much power in a solid state amp but cheaper.

At least you will know.

Then if you decide you still can't live without tube sound you know you will probably have to look for some significantly more efficient speakers. 94 dB/W will give you the equivalent of about 500 WPC from your 100 watt tube amp.

Wind Chaser · « **Reply #16 on:** 25 Mar 2007, 08:27 am »

Quote from: Russell Dawkins on 25 Mar 2007, 06:12 am

What's to stop you going back to the store where they recommended the MF KW 750, borrowing it for a day and finding out for sure if that's the answer?

If you like the result you could then start looking for that much power in a solid state amp but cheaper.

At least you will know.

Then if you decide you still can't live without tube sound you know you will probably have to look for some significantly more efficient speakers. 94 dB/W will give you the equivalent of about 500 WPC from your 100 watt tube amp.

Now that's just common sense - along very good and practical advice.

chgolatin2 · « **Reply #17 on:** 25 Mar 2007, 02:12 pm »

I wanted to borrow the equipment but the store seemed not to care about my real needs instead they were offering me a quick sale. I informed them that in order for me to do any serious consideration that I had to listen to the equipment at my home, made sense to me and to any other smart consumer that is considering making a "huge" expense of 16k or better said 11k for a demo set

I will call the store again and findout if they could atleast borrow me the equipment but I doubt that they will. Real "Audiophile" stores let you borrow their equipment for you to demo it at home, plus it took me an hour just to get to the store so invested a little time and effort but the results were unfruitful.

The MF was a SS/Tube combo hybrid, nice sounding stuff. Also looked into their KW500 integrated which was a bit more reasonable cost especially in the "used" market

zybar · « **Reply #18 on:** 25 Mar 2007, 02:26 pm »

Quote from: Russell Dawkins on 25 Mar 2007, 06:12 am

What's to stop you going back to the store where they recommended the MF KW 750, borrowing it for a day and finding out for sure if that's the answer?

If you like the result you could then start looking for that much power in a solid state amp but cheaper.

What you suggest seems quite unfair to the store.

Why should they lend out gear to somebody who has no intention of purchasing the gear, but only wants to hear if it is the answer?

People should only use the dealer if they might actually purchase what they are auditioning.

If you want to hear the gear AND pay below dealer prices, buy it used (here at AC, Audiogon, etc...) so you can try it in your system. This will provide less financial risk and not take advantage of the dealer.

George

boead · « **Reply #19 on:** 25 Mar 2007, 03:56 pm »

Unfair to the store?

The HiFi shop by me constantly lends out gear, you have to get on a waiting list!

Since most of it is synergy, it’s almost impossible to buy something without trying it out.

BTW: this company called http://www.fatwyre.com/ started out selling new and used cables and they lend them to you. Now they also sell components and they lend them too.

My amp is 1.8 wpc. I drive a 95db sensitive speaker. I have used my old trusty RatShack sound meter and found that 82db is the normal listening volume to me. High 80’s is kind of loud.
Unless you listen to very dynamic music types (orchestra), the wattage needed is very low. Hundreds of watts even for a very inefficient speaker is hard to justify in the real world – maybe on paper but that’s not worth much.

Sounds like the Audio shop wants to sell you an amp.

My buddy borrowed a MF amp and a Parasound at one point, didn’t like either.